Glossaries are information repositories that hold information defining particular terms such as acronyms, specialist language or jargon, that are used in a collection of data or documents. In computer based document handling and processing systems, automatic links can be provided, such as hotlinks or hyperlinks, which provide for the automatic display of the glossary definition for a given term.
In order to build such a glossary in a document processing system, the glossary terms must first be identified and selected from the documents to which the glossary will apply. Once selected, each term must then be defined in the glossary, in other words, and explanation of the acronym, specialist language or jargon must be entered. Each glossary term is then linked to each occurrence of the term within the relevant documents. If the documents or glossary are modified, the links to the terms need to be properly maintained.
One problem with existing document handling or processing systems is that the identification of relevant glossary terms is a time consuming and laborious process. Furthermore, maintaining a glossary in view of modifications to the document to which it applies is also a time consuming and laborious process.